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At Hackdays, Learning to Start a Startup

16.10.2018

Company founder René Tünnermann advises teams at the Founders Hackdays at CITEC

CITEC and the Founders Foundation are organizing the Founders Hackdays from 26–28 October at the CITEC building. The event gives participants the opportunity to develop prototypes, demos, or presentations for startups that deal with intelligent systems, the Internet of Things, etc. As part of the Hackdays, mentors will advise the new teams to help them develop a promising business concept. CITEC Alumni René Tünnermann will be one of the mentors. He is the CBDO and Co-founder of the company Margin.

René, which topics would you recommend to other startup founders?When founding a company, you have to make sure that you have an edge or an advantage somewhere in a subject area. It makes most sense to found a company in a subject area where you have a certain amount of expertise. Just because it's a trend technology, I wouldn't recommend founding in this area to everyone. It depends on your own skills and the scalability of the case.

How did you succeed in building a company?CITEC cooperates with many partners, such as Bertelsmann, Miele or it's owl. Examples like these showed me where technology was currently being implemented, and the desire to create something of my own grew. The implications of Programmable Money, namely Bitcoin and Blockchain in general, caught my attention and convinced me to play a part in building the future Internet of value. After we went through the programs of the Founders Foundation, we turned our side project into our calling and built up our bitcoin trading platform, which is called “Margin”.

What possibilities does CITEC offer with regard to founding a startup?At CITEC, there is a great deal of knowledge, experience and talent in the field of tech. There are the people who everyday are doing development and research in the areas of IoT, Robotic and Smart Home.

What possibilities do you see for participants in the Hackdays?At the Founders Hackdays, participants will learn what it means to set up their own startup. The Hackdays event combines research and entrepreneurship and serves a contact point to learn how totransform an idea into a business model. Participants will also learn a lot about markets, market access, and customers.

Which factor for success is decisive for the Founders Hackdays team?The team should have their mind set on winning the Founders Hackdays. This drive is crucial for building a prototype and get something going. It is also important that the teams present their product in the bmost convincing way possible to jury and audience at Pitch Day.

René Tünnermann studied computer science and robotics at Bielefeld University. After completing his studies, he did his research at CITEC in the field of Ambient Intelligence, where he mainly worked on human-machine interfaces, IoT and Smart-Homes.